Foreigner Go Home (With Me!)

FOREIGNER GO HOME (WITH ME!): my first hour-long solo show that I took to Edinburgh’s PBH Free Fringe Festival.

2012: Review in Broadway Baby:

“Her ability to admit her own contradictions inadvertently makes her wiser than people twice her age. It’s this self-awareness that gives her poems a humorous edge but also allows her to question the paradoxical situations around her…..what is it to live in a democracy and what is it to be truly accepted? What this has resulted in is an hour of thought-provoking poetry by a very clever lady.”

ORIGINAL SYNOPSIS—
Long Story Short: Awkward twentysomething from the Far East moves to London for the first time to find her place in history and the world, while dodging riot cops, spies, bailiffs, orientalists and haters. She will try to make sense of the bizarreness of living in the (so-called) Centre of the World in the 21st century through poems and stories. Hilarity ensues.

Long Story Long: In 2009 Stephanie Chan got off a plane at Heathrow, joining millions of colonial subjects throughout history who felt the need to live in the same town as their Queen. Join her in the strangest years of her life as she gallivants around London, attempting to take its men, eat its women and steal its jobs. She explores what it means to be foreign, what it means to be home, and why the hell everyone from everywhere feels the need to go away to find themselves.

Post- Edinburgh Post-Script: Brilliant experience all in all. Kind of worked out what I was trying to say more and more each day of the performance, and more often than not was surprised by the audience. Part of the show’s theme came down to, why do so many revolutionaries live in London, and how do I become one? I ended up finding the answer after I left Edinburgh, and was performing poetry at a festival in Taunton, Somerset. At around 3AM on Sunday night I started discussing this with another poet who knew a bit more about revolutions than me. He said it came down to something in the water on Holloway Road.

2013: yes I am bringing Foreigner Go Home (with me!) to the Edinburgh Free Fringe again, but this time, older, wiser, more (less?) cynical and quite possibly less crap.

–Forget What You Heard (About Spoken Word):3-10 August, The Cowgate –> Matt Cummins and I are dragging our show out of its Stoke Newington basement and up to Edinburgh! We will be featuring 3 poets a day to talk about their shows & do other things. E-mail me if you’re a spoken word person with a show in Edinburgh and if we like you (we like most humans generally) we’ll give you a slot.

–Love, Science and Revolution: 3-24 August, The Banshee Labyrinth. Featuring none other than the inimitable 2011 UK Slam Champ David Lee Morgan. I am helping him with tech stuff from 12-16 August.